When Trish and Richard Wilkinson took up residence in the iconic Rock House in Wee Jasper following an enforced lifestyle change in Canberra in 1998, they inherited paddocks full of blackberries and other unwelcome weeds.
The terrain was also somewhat unwelcoming, with undulating karst limestone outcrops harbouring all types of noxious plants and feral pests.
They found a happy solution in Angora goats and have been making ends meet ever since.
“This place was just a mess,” Trish said. “It took 10 years to get the place in order. We started with goats in 2004 to eat the blackberries.”
The couple moved into Soft-rolling Skin (SRS) goats and appreciate the value of higher micron mohair.
Today they have 413 goats on 100 hectares – a combination of rocky country, river flats and steep hills covered in apple box trees. They have contended with drought, then floods, which led to blue-green algae.
“We had just got the pastures nice then the thistles came up where the water receded after the flood,” Trish said.
Now the river flats are nice and green with medic, which the goats walk down to have a bite before walking back up to the rocks to chew on the “rough stuff”.
The couple are always amused by the “nanny day care”, whereby about four older does stand lookout for all the kids, giving their mums time off.
Such is their success with the herd, the couple are selling 120 does to a South Australian farmer this month who is moving into mohair production.
The bigger money is in mohair from the kids so they are selling the older does.
“We’ve got our favourites but sometimes it’s not good economics to keep them,” Trish said. “We’re superannuants who run a hobby farm but it really is more than a hobby. It’s not a necessity to sell everything we keep growing. We’re only a small business because we’re both over 70.”
Richard was retrenched at 57 from the public service and yearned to return to the land. He grew up on a farm and went to an agricultural high school.
Trish had taught high school and college English and Japanese, and now finds her niche as “surrogate mother” to a handful of orphaned or infirm goats.
She has named the strays according to their traits and personalities. There is Hoppy, which has three working legs; Mother who leads Frankie Blue Eyes, which is a bit blind, and Feral Miss, whose mum rejected her after a week.
“Angora kids are quite frail. We lose so many because they can’t take the first drink.”
Trish hand-rears the “orphans” with egg yolk and milk using a syringe to get them to bond with mothers.
It pays to give extra care to the kids, whose mohair is highly valued. Kid mohair pays about $20 a kilogram and they each produce about a kilo to two a year and are usually shorn twice a year.
Mohair goats usually produce about a tonne twice a year, averaging $15 to $16/kg.
The Wilkinsons use two of eight bucks to join about 50 does for a month and kid in October. They patrol the paddocks three times a day while the kids are fragile.
They now employ a farmhand and use a Combi Clamp for handling the goats.
